Creating an application similar to "Who Wants to be a millionaire"

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lloydi12345

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Our team is planning to make an application similar to "Who wants to be a millionaire" show. So there's one pc and this pc will be connected to multiple devices inside a tv studio. I have an electronics background in microcontroller (3 yrs), c++ (2 yrs) and c# (2 yrs) too.

The project is something like this:
1. A software will be run in a computer and there will be multiple buttons pressable
2. When a button is pressed, certain images or texts will be displayed on the tv screen, live tv set, lights will be controlled and sounds will be controlled

Any ideas how huge this project will be?
 
If you need for the pressing of one button to lock out other buttons, I recommend a "game show circuit" (sometimes called a Jeopardy circuit) that is external to the PC. Polling multiple buttons through a serial or USB port adds time delays and ambiguities that can invalidate the results. If you are talking about audience response buttons, where there is a large quantity but timing data is not critical, then one option is a large long serial string, but again I'd recommend an external multiplexing circuit to take some of the load off the PC. Once accurate button data is inside the PC, it's all "just software".

ak
 
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Former Jeopardy contestants (University of Pittsburgh student and a family friend) claim the buttons are not very fair or consistent.
 
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gophert said:
Former Jeopardy contestants (University of Pittsburgh student and a family friend) claim the buttons are not very fair or consistent.
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Based on the GE College Bowl, my high school participated in a local TV station's version called "In The Know". To help them practice, I built a 2 x 4 game show controller out of relays in 1967, and upgraded it to TTL in 1969.

I'm available at reasonable rates.

ak
 

The show has been doing well for about 40 years - I don't think they plan on changing anything. My point was, (addressig your comment on delays and ambiguities above,) a good design is not needed for a good show.
 
The "who rang in first" question would be simple with an MCP23017 port expander. The interupt on change flag can tell when one or more buttons have been pressed. One of the registers will tell you which was the first port pin to change so you can be leisurely about reading it and still have no question who was first.

You might want to handle stuff like this with a microcontroller (reading button presses and setting indicator lights) and report the results to a pc handling higher level stuff.
 
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